15 Things
by Dream Treader
Summary: Fifteen things that shaped the man Teddy Lupin becomes.


Fifteen Things About Teddy Lupin:

1. The first time he figured out how to stop his face from morphing and pulled back layers of facades to find his true face, his nana had yelled at him to never look like that again. His heavy lidded eyes were bright blue and his full lips had a wicked smirking curve beneath his large sharp nose, his features sharp and haughty. He was pale and his lips and eyes stood out dramatically beneath his wildly curling black hair. Teddy had never seen her so horrified. Ever since, the face he claims as his true one is a facsimile of that. Less sharp, less pale, less dramatic and beautiful. He claims his eyes a murky green and his lips are longer and thinner but more apt to smile. His hair is the same shaggy brown as his grandfather's, not wild and black. He looks as much like a mixture of his father and grandfather as he could make look natural.

He never told his grandmother that the face she saw was his real one.

2. He lost his virginity when he was 15 to Madam Rosemerta's daughter, Ava, in the back of the Hog's Head. Ava was there on a date with his friend Joey. Teddy never told him, not even when they got engaged. When Joey broke off the engagement, he'd never been so relieved.

He's still never told him.

3. He started dating Victorie his final year at Hogwarts because she was the prettiest girl at the school except maybe her sister, she was interested, and she was there. He knew he didn't love her, but it was almost a bragging right. He knew it was wrong, he'd been raised better than to use a girl when she thought she loved him, but he did it anyway.

He still felt a twinge of regret when she broke it off.

4. Sometimes, when he was growing up, he couldn't sleep because he could hear Nana crying at night. He never went in to comfort her, because she was always stoic and distant in the day. Instead, he'd sit outside her door until she stopped crying. It wasn't until her heard her breathy snores that he would go back into his own room.

He still doesn't know what to do when a woman cries.

5. He didn't join the Aurors to be like his godfather, like Harry's sons thought, or to follow in his mother's footsteps like his nana believed, he did it to prove that a werewolf's son could be better than any pureblood. It didn't work. He was the best, but it didn't further the werewolf cause.

After all, he was only the son of one.

6. His nana died the year he graduated from the Auror Academy. Honestly, Teddy was half-way relieved. She'd been unhappy as long as he'd known her, and her death allowed him to take longer, riskier assignments further away from home.

He's never forgiven himself for feeling that relief.

7. He was always closest to Lily, and when she confessed she was in love with him on her sixteenth birthday, he didn't know what to do. He didn't mean to kiss her back, it just happened. He immediately applied for a transfer to Russia.

He didn't come to any Potter-Weasley gatherings or any where he could run into her for two years.

8. Louis was his favorite Weasley, the youngest of Bill and Fleur children and the only boy, he was often overlooked, except by the girls. Still, the boy had a cynically French sense of humor that made Teddy laugh no matter how mad he was. Louis was ignored by most of the family because he was quiet and there were just so many people in the family. He gave the best advice, and rarely criticized. The first and only time he caused a scandal, he announced he wasn't going to a furthering school; he was going to India and the Continent.

Teddy was the only one who supported his desire to be a painter.

9. When he saw her again at Harry's retirement ceremony, where he was one of the honor guard, he couldn't keep his eyes off her. She wore a simple black dress that hugged her hourglass figure and made her bright red hair stand out in all its flaming glory, crowned with a simple but elegant band of diamonds. She danced with all her brothers and male cousins but didn't spare a look for him.

He kissed her in full dress uniform with all his bosses and her family looking on.

10. Even though the wizarding world isn't a place where there's much religion and his neither his nana nor his godfather ever mentioned God or religion, Teddy attends mass every Sunday he is able to at St. Mary's Chapel in Hampstead. When Lily found out, she gave him a medallion for Saint Michael the Archangel and told him to wear it always. He has, and it deflected a cutting charm aimed for his heart.

He says the Lord's Prayer every night and the prayer to St. Michael every morning.

11. It wasn't until he began to go to church that he finally admitted that he was angry with his parents for fighting the night they died. He'd never understood why they both had to go. He'd been angry at his nana too for being unaffectionate and distant when he was a boy, and his godfather for letting nana raise him. It wasn't until Lily starting going with him that he finally let go of the anger and realized that it had been for the best, all of it.

Being with Lily makes him realize the good in his life.

12. Lily wears a dozen bright red and gold painted metal bangles on her left wrist that her cousin Louis sent her as a birthday gift when he was painting the cities in India. Sometimes his heart aches to hear the sound of those bracelets after he's been in the field for a few weeks. When Lily forgets to wear them, he reminds her as nonchalantly as he can. She never asks why, just puts them on with a smile and kisses his cheek, thanking him for reminding her.

He doesn't know how he got lucky enough to be gifted with her love.

13. When Teddy asked Lily to marry him, it came out on a whim. They were in the middle of a big family dinner and he simply set down his knife and fork, looked across the table into her smiling eyes and said "I think I'd like to marry you." Everyone got quiet and Lily finished chewing before taking a sip of pumpkin juice and answering, tortuously slow: "Of course you would."

She didn't say yes until she'd hurled herself across the table and kissed him smack on the lips.

14. Lily loves wearing red, even though all the girls tell her that it clashes with her hair. Her bright red lips match her long red finger nails and the nails on her perfectly pedicured feet, the soles on her expensive pumps, her bangles, and her favorite clothes. Teddy loves Lily in red. The first time she ever kissed him, she was wearing a tight red cashmere dress that he'd ended up stretching out fisting his hands in it.

She still has the dress.

15. Lily wore a cream colored dress at their wedding. She said she couldn't in good conscience wear white, since they had anticipated the wedding night. It was silk and the way it hugged her curves made him look forward to the wedding night again. She wore the diamond band she had worn the night he kissed her. Just for him, there was a big red silk rose on the hip, matching her bright red nails and the bangles he'd made her swear to wear.

Her engagement ring was the brightest colored ruby he could find.


End file.
